Just you wait Mr Bradley, just you wait!

Heist! is completed!
I can't wait for it to go online now, because I really want to hear what people think of it. It's been hard work, not all of it enjoyable I have to say, but ultimately I think it's been a satisfying experience having complete control over my work. It hasn't come out quite how I imagined (mostly because I didn't exactly use all the incidental music I planned I think!) but I'm really pleased with it. Considering it's my first full length story that I've made, I think I've done really well, even if I do say so myself.
I've listened to it loads of times now and I'm still not sick of it. I don't quite know how that's happened. Maybe it's because it's mine, I don't know! I know it almost off by heart and still I'd be happy to have it on now (although I think I need to have a break from it really for my own sanity!)
Overall my favourite scenes are 6 and the last one, which sound great. The one I had most trouble with was Jann on the phone, because getting the right ring tone was the toughest thing to find and my favourite use of music is the Gershwin in scene 6, which fits really well, considering it was a piece chopped out at random.

That's taken up lots of time, but it's been worth it. I just don't want to do another one in a hurry. But should I ever write another script I think I'd like to produce it again.

In between doing that we've been doing a spot of shopping on eBay recently. One of my great passions is the music of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop (as everyone knows) and int he last few weeks I've treated myself to a couple of the old albums. I'm sure there are very few people out there who'd love it, but I find it all really rather wonderful. The way the composers are grasping what was then new and exciting technology, and making it do things they didn't expect is wonderful.
Fourth Dimension is an album from 1973 by Paddy Kingsland who'd go on to write the Hitch Hikers music and Doctor Who scores. It's funky synth stuff, very 70s groovy and really quite likeable. The Soundhouse album from 10 years later is rather more diverse, but not quite as exciting, although the inclusion of the The Whale from the Hitch Hikers TV series scores lots of points from me. Somehow the later music doesn't seem quite so inventive- certainly it doesn't equal the stuff on the 1968 Pink album, BBC Radiophonic Music, but then it's not trying to. By 1983 the synth had made the musicians slightly less unique I suppose, because they weren't manipulating bits of tape to make sounds that were different to everything else anymore. And by the time we get to the stuff on the CD we bought from 1994 of library music, there's nothing really that couldn't be done by anyone else.
There's still some albums to collect, and I'm sure they're things that few others could get excited about, but I do!

The other things have been a few of the Myth Makers DVDs. They're really good, considering they're just interviews with Doctor Who stars and creative staff. I was always a bit dubious about the tribute tapes, but the two we've seen so far, Patrick Troughton and Jacqueline Hill have been really wonderful- they've included rare interviews with the two of them (both rarely interviewed- indeed I'd never seen any footage of Jackie interviewed before) and they come across to warm tributes to the actors. Indeed having Jackie's husband Alvin Rakoff on her disc made it, because we get an insight into her life that we've never had before. Great stuff and I'd really like to get hold of some more of them!